


Hold Yourself Together

by jedijarmarcal



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, F/M, Forest Scene, non-canon canon, post-sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 16:15:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20660072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedijarmarcal/pseuds/jedijarmarcal
Summary: Short and ? sweet.He's already gone.He promised, a man of his word.Now what?





	Hold Yourself Together

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I've written about these two. I've written a lot about this moment, and I always wondered how Caroline acted after Klaus left town, for good.
> 
> This is just an idea I've been ruminating on.

Her skin still had indents from the leaves and twigs on the forest floor. He had been rough, frantic, and she relished in the pain on her flesh, desperate to ignore anything deeper- there was  _ nothing _ deeper- that was taking root. Because he was a centennial that had been here first, his bones should have been all but rotted away beneath her feet. He should have been dead and gone a long, long time ago. 

  
Instead, he chose  _ now _ , the moment where he let her feel every inch of him, and welcomed her into the parts of him she had only guessed existed.

It was stupid, how she stood there; could he still hear her, or had she finally mastered stillness? With everything, Caroline hoped she could become a tree and dig deep into the earth, desperate to exist without feeling, if even just for a few centuries. When time became nonsensical, she could move forward, with only the fuzziest idea of  _ someone _ . 

Her skin still bore the bruises where his hands had gripped her upper arms… his mouth on her collarbone… 

Calmly, she pulled her ruined top on and pretended it was 6am and she was simply getting ready for school. This was normal, casual, nothing worth thinking about. 

When did breathing become something you forgot to do? There was a lump in her throat, and every few seconds it threatened to rip her mouth open and unleash whatever monster wanted him to stay. 

Like with hunting bunnies, she commanded herself to adapt to her new reality.  _ You are a vampire, you do not need to breathe.  _

A piercing beep shattered everything, her phone chiming with a text from Elena, reading that all was well in Mystic Falls again. 

“Everything is fine.” Caroline spoke it, put her every little neurotic attention to detail into meaning those words, 

“Klaus is gone.” He promised, and he meant it too. 

She rubbed her arms, wanted a hug, despaired at the lack of imperfection on her skin. 

_ Klaus left _ . 

Panic coursed through her veins, she wanted to tear after him, pin  _ him _ to a tree and demand he make himself a liar for her- they could be liars together, with how often she lied to him before today. He had to know right? She’d never felt anything like that, never been  _ loved _ so entirely, and it was unbearable, intolerable- a thousand synonyms!- that he would do that to her and fucking leave.

The display on her watch read 08:11pm. 

“You’ve got two minutes, Forbes.” She would allow herself that much to really feel what he left her with. Everyone was likely back at the boarding house, and Klaus was god knows where, but damn sure not anywhere he could hear her. 

A cry, stillborn, fell from her lips, and Caroline scooped it up, swallowed it again. The pain was vervain, then something deeper, more like concrete shattering, behind her ribs. 

Strong, she stood, her hands clutching her cheeks, petrified of what she had just allowed herself to indulge in. 

08:12pm.

Beautiful, the sun gave one last push of daylight, lighting the forest on fire. Golden leaves rustled around her, and she missed his eyes, how they had been golden for her- not when he’d been on the verge of climax, but after, when he held her face and stared at her so profoundly, that Caroline  _ knew _ the memory of it would sustain the centuries. 

08:13pm.

Full of light, she felt it pouring from her dead heart, bleeding into her guts, scorching her with the intensity of just what she lost.

08:14pm.

Standing straighter, she let her hands, shaking, fall to her sides, her eyes fixed on a random tree across the clearing. She matched it’s stillness, felt herself fit into a box within her mind. This trick was not born on the night she died, along with all of her other enhanced abilities, no, this was something girly, little Caroline had mastered many years ago.

Steady, she exhaled. “Okay, and a smile.”

The action hurt only a little, like when her teeth sharpened into razor sharp points. 

“My name is Caroline Forbes, and everything is okay.”

Satisfied, she started walking back, when something caught her eye, glinting as the sun finally lost its battle with the night. Curious, she reached down and pulled one of her lost buttons from the underbrush. It sat in her upturned palm, daring her to place any sort of meaning onto it. 

Putting it into her pocket, she smiled. 


End file.
